


the memory of this night for food

by indigostohelit



Category: Narcos (TV), Narcos: Mexico (TV)
Genre: Choking, Dirty Talk, F/M, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Multi, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Porn with Feelings, Post-Finale, Power Dynamics, Threesome - F/M/M, Unhealthy Relationships, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-25
Updated: 2018-11-25
Packaged: 2019-08-29 10:31:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16742326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indigostohelit/pseuds/indigostohelit
Summary: Love cannot fill the thickened lung with breath, nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone; yet many a man is making friends with death even as I speak, for lack of love alone.The way he’d kissed her on the cheek – Amado’s been kissed by Miguel like that. Like everything Miguel does, love and power, affection and danger. If he were Miguel, he doesn’t know if he’d have left Isabella alive. She’s like a wild tiger. Even in a cage, she’s a threat.After the Season 1 finale, Amado and Isabella come to find Miguel in his rooms.





	the memory of this night for food

**Author's Note:**

> In my defense, [that one gif of Diego Luna.](https://66.media.tumblr.com/8a0f58e4806d2c2a73b29e27b72ea0b1/tumblr_pieu0guIu01rzrnw5o1_540.gif)
> 
> This was meant to be a sequel to the prequel I wrote earlier and wasn't and I give up. Title from Sonnet XXX (Love Is Not All), by Edna St. Vincent Millay. The characters are based on the Narcos: Mexico show, and not on any real-life people. Translation Convention applies as per usual. Also as per usual, this is entirely Austin and Michele's fault.
> 
> The warning here is complicated. I considered tagging it as "Undernegotiated Kink", but the power dynamics the characters are playing with aren't created for a play setting, and have serious real-life consequences to them, so it seemed disingenuous. Let's say - the dynamic of Miguel and Isabella's relationship adheres to its dynamic in canon, which includes Miguel demeaning Isabella in a way that has sexist overtones. This is a porn fic and so the demeaning happens in a sexual context. Like the show, this fic doesn't condone that behavior; like I believe the show does, I have tried to write this as not just bad but unwise, and Isabella certainly gets her own back to a greater extent than she does in canon.

He hesitates in front of Miguel’s door before he knocks. When he does knock, it’s a while before he hears anything; then, a rattling. The peephole goes briefly dark.

The lock clicks. The door opens. Miguel looks up at him, his eyebrows raised.

“You were expecting someone else?” says Amado.

“I might have been,” says Miguel. “Please, come in.”

There’s two red armchairs, and heavy curtains on the windows, and a thick golden carpet in front of an empty fireplace. Amado can see the foot of a bed through an archway on the other side of the room. Miguel sinks into one of the chairs. Amado does the same, and crosses one leg over the other.

 _I might have been._ Amado won’t pretend not to know what he means; he’d seen Isabella at that meeting, had heard how she’d scraped and schemed to earn her place in one of those chairs. The way he’d kissed her on the cheek—Amado’s been kissed by Miguel like that. Like everything Miguel does, love and power, affection and danger.

If he were Miguel, he doesn’t know if he’d have left Isabella alive. She’s like a wild tiger. Even in a cage, she’s a threat.

“What can I do for you?” says Miguel. He’s tapping a cigarette with one finger out of his pack, his legs spread. He looks entirely at his ease.

Amado looks at him, and thinks, quite clearly, that he’s never going to see Don Neto again, and that it’s Miguel’s fault.

He’d loved his uncle. Which is not to say he thinks love is important; he knows it’s not, or not in the way that it is in fairy tales, where it can sustain you, keep food in your belly and clothes on your back, fuel planes, erase arrest records, dig bodies out of graves, put the heads back on corpses and set their hearts beating like clockwork, like they’d never stopped at all. But he’d loved him, nevertheless.

More important than love: he’d learned from his uncle. Learned things like honor; learned things like debt and obligation, the careful tally of duties owed, accounted by blood or bullet. Don Neto had believed in the old laws between men, the laws of respect and loyalty. He most likely believes in those things still, in his cell. He’d killed the man who’d killed his son.

If their positions were reversed—if it were Amado in jail, bought and sold to feed the fire of Miguel’s ambition, and Don Neto untouched and free—his uncle would shoot Miguel dead. Amado is sure of it.

There’s a gun in his jacket. He can feel the cold shape of it against his ribs.

He sinks into the chair across from Miguel. “We didn’t get a chance to speak at the meeting, really,” he says. “I wanted to say hello.”

Miguel looks at him. His eyes are bright and cold.

“Hello,” he says.

Amado, rarely at a loss for words, hesitates. How can he speak to Miguel? What is there to say? _I hadn’t expected to see you—_ Miguel certainly knows that. _I was pleased to hear about your deal with the army—_ he doesn’t know whether Miguel will believe him. He isn’t sure whether he believes himself. Seeing Miguel take his place at the head of the circle, the Mexican army gathered behind him, he’d felt like a rabbit under a fox’s paw. He wants to flee the country, to throw a punch, to go to his knees and kiss Miguel’s feet. He’s been Miguel’s man in Ciudad Juárez for years and at his right hand for who knows how long, and he hardly knows if he can say tú to him.

He fumbles for a cigarette in his jacket to cover his uncertainty and lights it in a cupped hand. Miguel watches, impassive. Amado can see the signs of impatience in him – not in a tapping foot or drumming fingers, but in Miguel's breath, in his hands, in how he holds his head. This, presumably, is what the years of knowing him are worth.

“I was sorry to hear about Rafa,” Amado says, and immediately wishes he hadn’t. Either Miguel didn’t sell Rafa to the police as he had Don Neto, in which case Amado is poking at a bruise, sounding as if he’s interested in Miguel’s weaknesses; or he did, in which case Amado is prying into Miguel’s betrayals, sounding paranoid, troubled by Miguel, as if he thinks Miguel will call the Americans on him next.

Which, God knows, he may. But Amado would prefer him not to have an excuse.

Besides, he hadn’t been sorry to hear about Rafa. Miguel certainly knows that much.

But all Miguel says is, “Thank you.” His eyes are flat and black, shark-dead.

Fuck it. “The business,” says Amado, “as it continues—I don’t want to say anything that you’d rather I say in an official meeting, but—" He wishes, suddenly and fiercely, that he were wearing his sunglasses, and could hide behind them. “Miguel, I want you to know—”

There’s a knock on the door.

Amado pauses, his mouth open. Miguel’s eyebrows go up; he motions to Amado to stay in his chair, stands up, crosses to the door, bends to peer into the peephole.

What he sees there makes his face go still, his eyes flare bright and hungry. Amado feels his stomach begin to sink, his heart rate pick up. He watches Miguel click the lock on the door, slide the chain, turn the knob.

“Hello, Isabella,” he says.

“Hello, Miguel,” says Isabella, and stalks past him into the room.

 _Stalks_ is the right word. She’s wearing what she wore at the meeting, those high heels and pants the gold of autumn, that shirt, black and sleeveless and clinging to her like it can’t stand not to be touching her. But her face hasn’t changed from what it looked like when Amado last saw it, when she was turning away from Miguel, her heels clicking across the tile and away from the circle of men in their chairs talking business. Angry, humiliated. Defeated, maybe. Something else, some thing Amado can’t quite name.

Miguel passes beside her and sits. Amado twitches, meaning to get up; Miguel shakes his head, so quickly that Amado almost thinks he’s imagined it.

Amado sinks back down. He can see Isabella scan the room; he can see the moment she realizes she’s standing, and that Miguel is making her stand, while he and Amado sit. It doesn’t change the expression on her face.

“You wanted to speak to me?” says Miguel.

She glances at Amado again. He can see her thinking, and thinking quickly: she’d expected to be speaking to Miguel alone, Miguel shows no intention of sending Amado out of the room, Miguel shows every intention of—not hostility, but nothing remotely like agreeableness. If anything, a desire to gloat, to press the advantage gained earlier today. Therefore Miguel may take opportunities to revel in that advantage. Therefore Miguel will—

Between one moment and the next, her body changes. Amado couldn’t say exactly what it is she does, has never had the need or the inclination to develop the skills that he is dimly aware for her have been a matter of survival: her shoulders drop, her jaw softens, her eyes widen. Just a fraction, just a hair, but enough that without warning Amado feels his hindbrain sit up and take notice.

“We didn't get a chance to speak,” she says. “Earlier.” Amado can hear his own words in hers, has to stop himself visibly wincing. He looks at Miguel, to see if Miguel's heard it.

“I spoke to you,” Miguel says, mild.

Her nostrils flare, very briefly. Miguel sees it; she sees him see it; her eyes go blank as a wall. Amado swallows.

“Let’s say,” she says, “I was unsatisfied.”

“Then what are you here for?” says Miguel. He’s looking up at Isabella. Amado can feel his own breath going shallow. He doesn't know all the promises Miguel's made to her, nor if she's made any to him. But he has eyes, he has ears; the air between them is like ozone.

Miguel's voice drops. “What do you want, Isabella?”

She bites her lip - a provocation, or a mark of her frustration. Amado sees Miguel’s eyes flare. To him, they’re the same.

“The same thing I always want,” she says. “A seat at the table.”

His eyelashes flutter. “What will you do to earn it?”

“I’ve earned it already,” she says, sways closer to him. “I’ve earned more. You know that.”

“Maybe so,” says Miguel, tilts his head just slightly. “But the rules haven’t changed. You still won’t get anything unless you get it from me.”

Closer she steps, the light glinting off the long line of her leg. “Then the question isn’t what I want you to give me,” she says, very soft. “The question is, what do you want me to give you?”

He hums, low. Then he reaches up to his throat and undoes one of his buttons, revealing the smooth brown of his throat. Amado sees the flash in Isabella’s eyes—triumph, disgust, want. And—not relief, something heavier and angrier than relief; Amado is certain, suddenly, that she’d expected exactly this from Miguel. That he’d done just what she’d thought he would do.

Miguel sees it, too. He doesn’t look away from her; his face shows no surprise. He only blinks, slowly. Then he says, “Amado, take off your pants.”

Isabella’s eyebrows jerk up. Amado says, “Sorry?”

“Take off your pants,” says Miguel. “Isabella is going to get on her knees for you.”

Amado stares at him. He’s hard, more or less instantly; there’s no use denying that. But he’s also in this room with his own gun pressed to his ribs, here on Miguel’s sufferance. He’d expected to talk in circles, like a diplomat; he’d expected to fight. He hadn’t expected to be—

—when Miguel had asked him to murder for los Arellano Félix, he hadn’t said yes. Hadn’t needed to. He’d gone, with men and weapons, feeling like the hand of God was on him; feeling like he could do no wrong in Miguel’s eyes.

And afterwards, Miguel had run his hands through his hair, and kissed him, and allowed Amado to fuck him, slow and tender, their foreheads pressed together, and murmured to him, _My pilot, my gun, mine._ And the next day had given Amado a briefcase with eighty thousand American dollars and a destination in Tamaulipas, and told him to go, and do what he needed to be done, what the business had needed to be done, and Amado had taken it, and left him.

That had been then: when reward had followed action as easily as thought, and obedience had been like breathing. This is now.

“I don't understand,” he says.

Miguel meets his eyes. “I'm giving you a reward,” he says. “For loyal service. I don't like to repeat myself, Amado. Take off your pants.”

Amado stands up, slowly, and unbuckles his belt. When he looks at Isabella, she’s standing stock-still by Miguel’s chair, her lips parted a little.

Her eyes flick over him, up and down. Uncertain for only a moment, then—calculating. Assessing him, as she’d assessed Miguel. He can’t see what conclusion she reaches. He's almost glad he can’t.

She steps towards him, her hips swaying, and sinks to her knees in front of his chair. Her eyes have gone half-lidded.

“Are you sure?” says Amado. He’s looking at her, but he doesn’t know who he’s speaking to.

Isabella says nothing. She’s smiling now, a little—not quite a true smile, but an expression of concentration. Amado looks at Miguel, seeking desperately for some clue in his face as to what this is—a punishment, a puzzle, a test of loyalty. He knows he's done nothing to deserve a reward.

Miguel is looking at them like. Like a rich dessert he’s planning to eat, like a bottle of fine wine before the first sip. It makes Amado's face grow warm, and he can see Miguel notice that, too, can see Miguel shift in his chair, can see where his pants are beginning to tent. His hand is still lingering at his own throat.

Amado glances down. Isabella is looking at Miguel, at how he's looking at her. He can’t interpret the expression on her face—curiosity, anger. Maybe even pleasure.

“Sit down,” she says to him.

Amado sits down.

Isabella puts her lips to Amado’s cock, very lightly, in a kiss. Then, without warning, she swallows it down.

She’s very good. It’s all Amado can think for the first minute; she sucks cock with such skill, her tongue and hand working on him. She shows every sign of satisfaction, enthusiasm. Her brows are a little furrowed—concentration, concern. She isn’t meeting Amado’s eyes.

“Push her head down,” says Miguel. He’s rubbing, just gently, at the bulge in his pants, watching Amado through hooded eyes.

Amado’s hand hovers over Isabella’s hair. Isabella is looking up at him sharply; he can’t tell what she’s thinking, if—

“Are you worrying about keeping her happy?” says Miguel, contemptuous. “If she wants you to stop, she can tell me she’s had enough. I want you to make her earn what she’s going to get.”

Amado hesitates. Miguel says, his voice dropping, “She’s your gift, Amado. I want you to enjoy her. Push her head down.”

“Fuck,” says Amado, broken. He feels his hand come to rest at Isabella’s scalp; she meets his eyes, defiant, and twists her tongue around the head of his cock. His hand jerks involuntarily, tugging at her hair. From his chair, Miguel makes a deep, satisfied noise.

“Good,” he says. “Good, Amado.”

Amado can’t control his groan at that, scraping low in his throat. He pushes at her head, gently, and she slides down. She’s taking him right to the base of his cock, as easily as if she was born for it. Her eyes are closed, her lashes a dark smear on her cheeks. They’re crinkled at the corners. She’s smiling.

He lets himself, just a little, push into the heat of her mouth. She hums around him, encouraging, and he jerks up involuntarily—he hears Miguel sigh in pleasure—and stares at her, her red lips wrapped around him.

He looks up. Miguel has slipped his hand into his pants, is visibly stroking himself now. He’s looking back at Amado, his gaze blank and unreadable.

Amado runs a thumb over Isabella’s cheek. He can feel his own cock through it, and the thought makes his face go warm again. Isabella is smiling at him, still, as if she can hear what he’s thinking. She sucks him down again, right to the root, and he takes a deep breath, begins to thrust up, gently, hardly daring to, into her mouth. The goodness of it, the warm willingness—he doesn't know how long he's going to last, with her at his feet, on her knees for him, her mouth open for him. He's watched Isabella before—what man hasn't?—but he's never dared to think he could touch her like this, never. He's never dared to think—he can feel himself speeding up, helpless—that he might be able to fuck her mouth, that she might even want him to, might let him—

“Pull off,” says Miguel. Isabella does, instantly, her mouth coming off Amado’s cock with an obscene pop. She looks at Miguel; her tongue darts out to lick at the corner of her mouth.

“What the fuck, Miguel,” Amado says hoarsely.

“You thought this was it?” Isabella says, scornful. There’s a rasp in her voice. She's looking at Miguel, not at him. “He isn’t satisfied. Of course he isn’t. Félix Gallardo has a plan.”

“I want you to open her up,” says Miguel, ignoring her. “Use your fingers first. Then your cock.”

Miguel had told him, once, to kill a man. He’d said it in just that way: matter-of-fact, clean. As if there were no possibility Amado wouldn’t obey him.

He hadn’t been wrong, then.

Amado swallows thickly. Isabella has risen to her feet, is easing her golden pants down around her hips until they puddle at her heels. Underneath, she’s wearing black panties, lace at their edges. When he reaches out to run his fingers over them, they’re already damp. He brushes her clit through the thin fabric and watches her eyes go wide and hot.

“Come here,” he says, his voice nearly as throaty as hers, and guides her down to his lap. Once she’s there, she shakes back her long beautiful hair like a river and grinds down on him, her hips moving in tight little circles. He bites off the curse on his tongue, digs his fingers into the arm of the couch, exhales shakily. “Jesus, Isabella,” he says. “Stop. You have to stop that.”

She doesn’t stop. Her hand comes into his hair; she leans into him, pressing her breasts against him, breathing into his neck. She smells sweet, cloying, like flowers. “Why?” she says. “You don’t like it?”

“Fuck,” says Amado. “God. Isabella. If it were up to me—”

“It’s not up to you,” she says, and smiles at him, her face an inch away from his. Close enough to kiss. Her eyes are cold.

“It’s not,” he says, puts his hands on her hips, holds her still. Which means he’s—holding her. Her whole delicate beautiful body, all her curves and all her dangerous intelligence and banked fury, sitting lightly on his lap, poised between his hands.

He looks over her shoulder. Miguel is staring at them, his lips parted. His hand is still in his pants, rubbing idly. Amado feels, suddenly, like—cheap porn. Like a vice Miguel likes and knows he shouldn’t, something he indulges himself with, an easy way to murder time.

“Are you enjoying yourself?” he says to Miguel. His voice sounds bitter to his own ears; he hadn’t meant it to.

Miguel doesn’t answer. Isabella says, “Of course he’s enjoying himself. He has someone doing his dirty work for him. All of the reward and none of the effort—isn’t that how you like to plan, Miguel? You can finger me without having to get your hands messy. You can fuck me even if you’re too much of a coward to touch me.”

“You want me to touch you?” says Miguel, slow, almost lazy. His voice is thick, like honey. “That’s what you want your efforts to earn you, hmm?”

She stills in Amado’s hands. Miguel laughs, quiet and rough.

“I thought I told you to open her up, Amado,” he says. “I still might want to fuck her, later on.”

Amado exhales. When he slips his fingers past Isabella’s panties, she’s already wet enough—just from blowing him, just from Miguel telling her to—that he can slide two fingers in up to the knuckle. He scissors them, gently, and feels her twitching above him, her shaky breaths.

A third finger goes in with hardly more effort. “Should I be—telling you how she feels?” he asks.

“I know how she feels,” Miguel says. “I wouldn’t have given her to you if I didn’t know she was good enough for you.”

Above him, Isabella inhales sharply. She’s—impossibly—wetter. Amado closes his eyes. “Do you want me to get her off?” he says. “She’s close.”

“It doesn’t matter whether she comes or not,” says Miguel, dismissive. And then, warm, “But you did well to ask.”

Amado can’t respond to that, to how it makes his cock jerk against Isabella’s ass. He works his fingers inside her instead, curls them lightly until she throws her head back and bites her lip hard. When he presses the pad of his thumb to her clit, she keens. He only has to rub at her once, twice, for her to clench hard around him; when he looks up, her jaw is tight, her eyes squeezed shut. He can feel the aftershocks rippling through her body.

“All right,” he says. “All right, sweetheart, come here,” hardly hearing what he’s saying, just lifting her, her whole warm loose-limbed body, and settling her onto his cock. Easing inside her, watching her blown-dark eyes, the long lashes fluttering onto her cheeks. “Come on. I’m going to fuck you, now. Do you want that?”

“Yes,” she says, hazy and light. He presses one thumb against her mouth, the hand he’d fucked her with; her eyes open, and she licks at it. Takes it into her mouth, sucks, the way she’d just been sucking his cock.

He buries his face in her breasts and starts to move inside her. God, the feeling of her, sweet and hot, so tight he thinks he might die. Under the flowers, the thick sharp smell of her, her arousal, where she’s come already, just on his fingers.

When he touches her clit with his free hand, she makes a harsh noise, almost pained—still sensitive. He hushes her, kisses at her neck, bites her nipple, works it with his teeth until she starts to move on him with purpose. What she’d been doing earlier, when he’d first put her on his lap—God, he’d thought it had driven him crazy then; he hadn’t even begun to understand. He’s starting to realize, dimly, that he’s going to get to come inside her. Going to make her come again, too, maybe, feel her clench around him, the fluttering of her on his cock—he wants it so badly, just to feel how turned on she is, to bury himself in her soft heat again and again—

“All right,” says Miguel. “That’s enough. Pull out.”

Amado stills more out of disbelief than anything else. He says, muffled into the swell of Isabella’s breast, “Are you _shitting_ me?”

“Amado,” says Miguel, almost fond. “I want you to still be hard when I fuck you.”

It’s the greatest effort of Amado’s life to not come then and there. He clutches at Isabella’s shoulders, presses his fingers hard into her skin—she hisses in pain, low—and pulls his head back, shaking his hair out of his eyes, to look at Miguel.

Miguel is looking back at him. As Amado watches, he raises his eyebrows, lifts a hand to crook a finger. “Come here,” he says. “I thought I told you to pull out already.”

Jesus Christ. He can hardly do it without coming, but Amado helps ease Isabella up and off his cock—she moves slowly, reluctantly, and instead of standing up she goes right to her knees on the carpet by Amado’s chair, her legs folding under her, like she can’t bear her own weight. Amado himself has difficulty standing; he stumbles to Miguel’s chair, hesitates between his spread legs.

“Do you want to be on your knees, too?” says Miguel pleasantly.

What doesn’t Amado want. To be on his knees, yes; to worship, to pay tribute, to kiss Miguel’s hand, Miguel’s cock, to feel Miguel’s sword on his shoulder. To feel Miguel’s hand gripping the back of his neck. To feel Miguel’s knife at his throat. To follow Miguel through México, through the world, to wait for Miguel to give him cities and states and to turn them into Miguel’s own country, his territory to walk and touch and take from as he pleases; to watch Miguel’s back, to watch his face. To pull out that gun in his jacket, and see Miguel look surprised for once. To have revenge for his uncle, justice for his family. To flee as far and as fast as he can, as soon as he can, from this fatal, predatory thing that Miguel has become and always was. To feel Miguel kiss him.

“You wanted to fuck me,” he says.

Miguel smiles at him, sleepy-eyed and pleased. “I do. There’s a bottle on the bedside table in the other room.”

There is. Amado pauses by Miguel’s bed to look at it; it’s still untouched, not even a dent in the pillow. How long had Miguel sat in that armchair by the fireplace, waiting for something to happen? Waiting for one of them to knock on his door?

If things were different, if it were a year ago—if it were even a month ago—he’d ask Miguel to fuck him in this bed. Would want to fall asleep on one side of him, Isabella on the other; would want to wake up in the sunlight to Miguel’s face.

It’s not a year ago. He steps back into the room, lifting the bottle for Miguel to see, and watches Miguel’s eyes crinkle at the corners, watches the light spill out of them.

Miguel opens him up carefully. He puts Amado over the arm of his chair, facing the door; then he pushes his fingers into him, one by one, easing Amado through it, murmuring into his skin as Amado jerks and shudders and slowly relaxes into each new intrusion. It’s been a long time since Amado’s been fucked, longer still since he’s been fucked by someone he liked. He’d forgotten how sensitive it makes him, how he goes quiet and shivering, his breath trapped in his chest, unable to speak. Unless that’s just Miguel; unless that's just what Miguel does to him, the feeling of his hands on Amado, the feeling of his voice.

When Miguel slides in, it’s not careful. Amado is glad for the preparation, glad for the time he took to make Amado ready for him. Miguel isn’t guiding himself gently into Amado, waiting for Amado to adjust. He seats himself easily and unceremoniously.

“Are you ready?” he says in Amado’s ear, and begins to move before Amado can reply.

It’s been—more years than Amado wants to think about—since he was fucked so well. Miguel is rocking into him, filling him up. It feels so good he can’t think; he goes to his elbows on the arm of the chair, stares blindly at his hands clenching and unclenching against the fabric. Miguel hums, considering, and takes Amado’s hips and hitches them up, so that the angle is better for him. Easily, casually, as if Amado’s body is his to maneuver, his to fuck how he likes, when he likes.

“Mother of God,” says Amado, hazy. “Jesus Christ. Miguel—”

“Yes,” says Miguel. “Yes, that’s just right.” And his right hand slides from Amado's hip to curl around his cock. Amado’s erection had flagged; now it hardens again, rapidly, as Miguel works him, running his thumb over his head, smearing precome down. Amado can’t find his breath, can’t find his thoughts. He’s going to come before Miguel is done fucking him. He’s going to come, and Miguel is going to keep using him.

And then Miguel stills, and he says, his hand still holding Amado’s cock, “What are you doing?”

“What?” says Amado fuzzily. Miguel ignores him. Amado looks up, blinking stars out of his eyes, and swallows hard.

Isabella’s taken his place in the other chair. Her left leg is hooked over one of the arms, careless; her head is lolling back. She’s watching them through half-lidded eyes. Her hand is between her legs, rolling her clit idly between two fingers.

“Did you expect me to wait for you?” she says.

“I expected you to control yourself,” says Miguel.

Isabella’s laugh is loud. “I’m sure you did.” She withdraws her hand, rises from the chair, steps towards them. Amado watches her walk, still dazed; Miguel hasn’t let go of his cock, hasn’t pulled out, and Amado can feel him inside, stretching him, keeping him full.

“I would have controlled myself,” says Miguel, dangerously quiet, “if I were you.”

When Isabella reaches them, she stretches out a hand over Amado’s shoulder. Amado can’t see Miguel, but he can see Isabella’s arm move, light: a caress.

“You have controlled yourself,” she says. “You've certainly controlled Amado.”

Miguel's hands are deadly still on Amado's skin.

“You only ever do let yourself want things you can control, Miguel,” Isabella says pleasantly.

She leans in, over Amado. If Miguel weren’t buried in him, he’d never feel it: Miguel’s stomach muscles tensing, his hand twitching at Amado’s hip. Bitten-off, buried—but a gasp, nonetheless.

One of Isabella’s cool hands is resting on Amado’s shoulder; the other is cupping Miguel’s face, above him, where he can’t see. The pressure of Miguel’s hands is easing, gradually. The one that had been holding his cock lets go, darts up. He hesitates over Isabella’s shoulder, briefly. Then he pulls it away.

She leans back. Above Amado, Miguel is panting, suddenly, as if he's just run a mile.

“You’ll send me out of the room when you talk business,” she says, “you’ll put me on your knees for your attack dog, but you’re still afraid of me.”

The nails of Miguel’s other hand dig into Amado’s skin. “I fucked the DFS,” he says, “I fucked the PRI, I fucked the Mexican army. I made them like it. I made them beg for more. You think I’m scared of you?”

She steps closer. When she leans in this time, Miguel flinches.

“I think,” she says, softly, “you know that the day you give me my seat at the table, you’ll have to admit you want me there. Do I think you’re scared of me? Yes, Miguel. I think you’re terrified.”

Amado feels Miguel inhale sharply. Then he pulls out of Amado, ignoring Amado’s wince, and comes around the chair. Isabella steps back; Miguel follows her, his face intent, predatory.

He reaches up, wraps one hand around her neck. Presses, just lightly. Isabella’s chest is rising, falling; she makes no move to stop him. Amado pushes himself upright, leans against the arm of the chair, watches them. He can't bear to do anything more. Can't bear to speak.

In her heels, she’d hardly come up to his nose. Now, her feet bare, her breasts brushing against his half-unbuttoned shirt, she looks even smaller. More vulnerable. Their faces are so close together, their bodies pressing. His hand around her throat, her hand creeping to his hip, as if they can’t bear to be apart from each other.

Isabella says, nearly a whisper, “Is this all you’re capable of?”

His jaw tightens, and his hand flexes. But she doesn’t even flinch; if possible, her eyes go darker. She eases her body forward, towards his, grinds her hips in a slow, dirty circle against him. Amado’s the one who sees how Miguel’s eyes go wide, how a muscle in his jaw jumps. Under his thumb, her throat bobs.

“Hurt me, if you’re going to hurt me,” she says. And then, quieter, “Kiss me, if you’re going to kiss me.“

Miguel hesitates, hesitates.

And Amado is moving from where he’s been standing by the chair, coming up behind Miguel, putting a hand on his hip. Pressing himself against Miguel’s ass, a mirror of Isabella. Miguel stills beneath him; Amado can feel how tense he is, the shallowness of his breath.

Hardly knowing what he’s doing, he curves his body around Miguel’s, leans towards his ear.

“Tell me what to do,” he says, low. “Tell me what to do, and I’ll do it.”

He feels, more than sees, Miguel’s eyes close.

“Miguel,” says Isabella softly. “Haven’t we put Amado through enough for tonight?”

He looks sharply at her. So does Amado; she only laughs at them both. “I think the two of us should reward him for his pains. Together.”

Amado isn’t sure what his face does, but Miguel squeezes his eyes shut. When he opens them, the pupils are blown wide as an addict’s.

“Together,” he says, his voice hoarse.

Isabella smiles at him. Then they’re moving in tandem, without a glance passing between them, Isabella circling around Miguel to touch Amado’s cock, Miguel twisting to catch Amado’s face in his hands and pull it down to his own. Their foreheads pressing together, first; then, their lips.

Isabella's hands are working between them. She’s moving in rhythm with Miguel’s lips, Miguel’s tongue—Amado doesn’t know how they’re doing it, like they’re two halves of one whole. He can feel his cock sliding against Miguel’s—Miguel’s, which is still slick and hard from, God, from being inside him—and Isabella’s light fingers on both of them, almost teasing, not quite enough—but it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter, because Miguel’s tongue is in his mouth, his beard scraping Amado’s chin and cheeks, Miguel is kissing him the way he hasn’t in years, like he’s desperate for Amado, desperate to touch him, to have him and lick into him and make him feel good, like he’ll starve without him—

When Amado comes, it’s almost a shock. He’s so focused on Miguel, on his hot mouth and hungry kissing, that he hardly notices he’s even getting close. Only when Isabella’s hand tightens on them both does he unexpectedly spill over the edge, coming in thick pulses over Isabella’s wrist and—Jesus—Miguel’s cock.

He breaks the kiss, gasps for air, stumbles away from the two of them. It’s his turn, now, to collapse by the chair, his legs gone boneless under him. But Isabella hasn’t stopped; Miguel is reaching out for her, gathering her into him, their features hazy in the gathering dimness.

Now Isabella’s hand is moving on Miguel’s cock alone. Now she’s tucked herself into him, her head under his chin. Now she’s speaking to him, low and murmuring. If Amado strains, he can just hear her.

“I wanted you when you told me to talk to Falcón,” she’s whispering. “I went home and fingered myself, thinking about you touching me. Fucking me in his house. I came so hard, Miguel.”

He’s making little, punched-out noises, his eyes shut, his hips bucking almost helplessly into her hand. She strokes his hair. “That first day you asked me to put you in a room with him,” she says. “I thought he wanted to sleep with you. I thought about what I would say if he asked me if you liked men.” Kisses his neck, gently. “How I would protect you.”

“Isabella,” Miguel says, “please—”

And then she’s kissing him, deep and sloppy, standing on her toes to put her face on a level with his, her thumb curving under his jaw and pressing at his throat, and Miguel is coming into her hand.

She steps back. Miguel is staring at her, his mouth open. Her hand is shining with his come and Amado's; as Miguel watches, she raises it to her lips, deliberately licks a stripe from its heel to fingertip.

Then she crosses the room, stops and bends down in front of Amado. For a moment, he’s briefly frozen, until he realizes she’s only picking up her clothes.

Behind her, Miguel sinks into his chair. He looks—tired, suddenly, more than he should, far more than can be explained by what they’ve just been doing. Maybe even old.

He watches Isabella unblinkingly as she steps into her heels, slithers her shirt over her shoulders. As she crosses the rest of the room, without looking at either of them, back straight, shoulders down.

She pauses at the door. “Miguel?” she says.

Miguel doesn’t answer, doesn’t look at her. Amado’s the one who says, “Yes?”

“Don’t forget the twenty percent,” she says, and she’s gone.

Amado stares after her; then he glances at Miguel, shrunken and exhausted in his armchair. Earlier today—even earlier this night—Miguel had sat like a king on his throne. Now he looks like a man. Only a man, sitting because he’s too tired to stand.

He steps hesitantly towards Miguel, until he’s standing beside him. Miguel glances up at him; his mouth works briefly, and then he looks away.

“She said—” Amado says, and watches Miguel wince. He seems to hardly know he’s doing it. And Amado feels the way he’s felt only once before, when he was standing over a living man’s grave, watching the dirt settle onto him: the frozen, fragile, terrifying uncertainty of knowing that the person in front of him is helpless.

“Your attack dog,” he says. “That’s what she called me.”

Miguel looks up at him, dark-eyed, his jaw set. Amado wants, suddenly, to touch him gently: to stroke his face, kiss his forehead, to hold him in the dark. To say, low in his ear with his arms wrapped around him so that Miguel cannot deny it, _You are loved. You love._

And he also knows that Miguel would rather Amado pulled out his gun and held it to his temple. Would rather Amado betray him, steal his money, kill his men, feed him to the Americans, than hold him close and touch all the parts of him that are unprotected. Than let Miguel know that he knows where they are.

He has debts to pay, obligations to meet, honor to uphold. It’s what his uncle would do; it’s what his uncle would ask of him.

But this is what love is, hard and sharp and unbreakable: a gun in his jacket, and a reason to use it. And the knowledge that he won’t.

It still won’t put food on his table, or fuel in his planes, or keep him safe from the police, or bring his dead out of their graves. It still won’t keep him safe, it still won’t keep him free. It’s not something he can live on. It’s only something that lives in him, like a stone he’s swallowed, an unexploded bomb in his ribcage.

He goes to one knee by Miguel. Lays his head on Miguel’s thigh, and lets Miguel’s hand come trembling into his hair. There’s so much heat in the skin under his cheek. He breathes, and breathes, and breathes.


End file.
